You're the Hero, Laurel
by RayWritesThings
Summary: Part of Oliver's letter to Laurel after the Undertaking makes everything much clearer to her, and she takes a far more literal interpretation of his words than he perhaps intended. / Alternate Season 2 Premiere, References to "Canary Cry" (4x19) Flashbacks


**So here's a little something I whipped up for the first day of Lauriver Week. This was for the prompt "Getting Together", and features my take on a Laurel-as-a-vigilante-from-season-2-on. I hope you enjoy, and don't forget to check out the rest of the Lauriver week fics!**

**-RayWritesThings**

**You're the Hero, Laurel**

As she read the letter over, Laurel felt the walls holding up her life, her emotions, her very _being_ tremble and start to cave in, just like the walls of CNRI only a couple short weeks ago had. And no one was coming to save her this time. Tommy was dead, and Oliver was gone.

She didn't understand. Did he not want to be with her? After what happened with Tommy, maybe he shouldn't. Maybe it was wrong, even if Tommy had left her weeks before. And yet Oliver was still professing his love in these paragraphs. Claiming he had to go so that she could save the city on her own. Didn't he understand she wanted to do it with him? Just thinking of the struggles that awaited her alone now was enough to make her want to curl right back up in bed with some tissues and some kind of comfort food. Or wine. She deserved an early five o'clock for this, didn't she?

And yet, there was one line in the letter giving her pause: _You're the hero, Laurel._ There was an implied _not me_ on the end of that sentence, and that was the thing she couldn't quite figure out.

She had never called Oliver a hero. She loved him, faults and all, but she'd never been one to go overboard with the praise. She thought he'd had the potential to be something more if he just believed in himself, of course, but she hadn't used the word _hero._

She had called the Hood as much.

And suddenly, Laurel's tears stopped. She couldn't really be thinking again that he was — but really, what else made sense? The blame he seemed to carry for Tommy's death, their sudden estrangement; Tommy must have learned the truth at some point. That was why his jealousy had suddenly boiled over, because Laurel _had_ had a connection with the Hood that had seemed so familiar in a way she'd never been able to articulate.

Oliver surviving the attack at Queen Manor by that hitman after Taylor; his disappearance in the Verdant at the firefighter benefit, only for the Hood to show up; the way he'd acted in her apartment when the Triad attacked; that _something_ he'd said that kept pulling him away. It was his double life, which he'd apparently decided to give up in the wake of the Undertaking.

The Hood hadn't been seen since the quake, and she knew he'd made it out of CNRI alive. If he continued to fail to appear, that would only make sense if Oliver had gone and left the country.

The enormity of this realization had her rushing out of the door with her keys and racing to the airport in the vain hope that he might just still be waiting to board. She had to call Thea once it became clear she wasn't going to get a look at the flight schedules for private planes. They told Thea that her brother had left just after dawn, which Thea related to her.

Laurel sank into a chair in the waiting area, head in her hands. What did she do now? Where was he going? He said he needed to do this alone, and part of her wanted to scream because didn't he realize she needed _him_ right now?

Laurel read over his letter again and again. He might come back someday. Was that someday dependent on the city being better? She'd have no way of enacting that kind of widespread change for years, which was how long it would take her to make it up the ranks of the DA's office. Assuming she even landed that interview. The law just moved too slowly in their city.

But if _she_ was the hero…

Laurel looked up. Could she really? The Hood had had to save her so many times. But Ollie was saying he thought she could be better than even him. Okay. Then that was what she'd do. If Oliver didn't want her holding back, then she wasn't about to disappoint.

Months later, Oliver reluctantly returned to Starling City at the insistence of his former teammates. His mother's trial was coming up, and countless employees at Queen Consolidated were facing unemployment if Stellmoor International was successful in their acquisition. These were things he was willing to intercede on, if only because they required Oliver Queen and not the Hood.

When he insisted that he would not be returning to a vigilante lifestyle, Diggle and Felicity exchanged a look. "Well, you might not have to."

He blinked. "Why not?"

"There's someone new in town, Oliver. A woman," Digg told him. "She showed up a couple months ago."

"What do you mean 'showed up'?"

"That's when the police started noticing her, anyway," Felicity took over. "She might have been active before, but their presence in the Glades is severely limited since the Undertaking, and that's mostly where she's been active. She's a vigilante," she added on.

"Has anyone been killed?" If this was another situation like the Savior, then it was his fault. He had brought this into his city.

But Digg shook his head. "Hospitalized, but no kill count. They're likening her to a guy that was active in the Glades a decade or so ago. Uses her fists, mostly. It's why she's so low on the cops' priority list."

"Yeah, so you can sit on the bench for as _long_ as you like," Felicity remarked. Oliver frowned. "Unless, you know, you want to figure out who she is."

They were both clearly confident this would sway him. Well, he had work to do as Oliver Queen before even thinking about looking into this woman.

First on the list was visiting Thea, who surprisingly had taken to running the Verdant in his absence. He couldn't exactly judge her decision not to continue her education, and he was glad she was making something of herself in the way that she wanted. Less pleasing was her resolve not to visit their mother in prison, but Thea was refusing to budge.

They were interrupted by the arrival of her boyfriend, Roy Harper. "Oh, you're back."

"And you're still here," Oliver replied.

"And late," Thea added. "Where have you been?"

"Sorry, boss," Roy said with far too much cheek for Oliver's liking. "Lost track of the time."

His sister sighed. "Well, you've stopped getting into fights, so I can't complain." The couple shared a kiss, which Oliver decidedly looked away from. "Oh, don't pretend to be grossed out."

"I'm just giving you some privacy," he insisted.

"Yeah? Why don't you go see Laurel? She's the one that told me you'd left in the first place."

He looked down, guilt churning in his stomach both at his lack of goodbye to his sister and for his cowardice when it had come to leaving Laurel. He wanted to see her badly, but he had no idea how she might feel about it at this point. How could he explain that he hadn't been able to stand facing her when knowing he was the reason their city was in ruins and their oldest friend was dead?

"Not sure where I'd find her." He'd seen enough of the Glades on the drive here to know that CNRI still had to be rubble.

"There's some fancy shindig the mayor's holding tonight. She might be at that since she's in the DA's office," Thea remarked.

"He's not gonna get an invite in time. It's starting in half an hour," Roy spoke up. When Oliver and Thea both looked at him, he shrugged. "I watch the news."

"I'll see if I can find her there," Oliver said. "You'd be surprised the kind of doors the Queen name opens."

Diggle turned the radio up as they were heading back downtown. _"Chaos as the mayor's benefit has just been attacked by armed men calling themselves the Hoods."_

"What?" Oliver sat forward, his head poking into the front seat.

"They've been robbing banks, not sure what caused them to escalate." Diggle glances back at him. "But they cover their faces and wear hoods in your honor."

Oliver's hands curled into fists around the leather seats.

"_Minor injuries have been reported, with one of the perpetrators being captured after a run-in with the unknown female vigilante, who made a surprise appearance at the event as well."_

"Digg, step on it." If Laurel was at that event with all of these varied dangerous elements in attendance, he needed to make certain she was alright.

But it turned out Laurel hadn't been one of the guests, he learned when he arrived to find Detective — or Officer — Lance arguing with Lieutenant Pike while ADA Donner seemed to be trying to mediate.

"She'd been under the weather at work, so I suggested she take the night off. I'm glad it kept her out of all this, certainly."

"Me too, since as your daughter is not present you have no reason to be at this scene, Officer Lance," Pike stated with a glare. "Now get back to your beat."

"Alright, I'm going!" Lance declared, marching in Oliver's direction. He stopped when he caught sight of him and heaved a sigh as he shook his head. "Guess you're here for the same reason I was."

There was no point denying it. "Laurel's safe?"

"Yeah. Suppose she would've been anyway, thanks to that woman. But, uh, you didn't hear that from me." Lance walked back out to his car and soon left.

Oliver lingered outside the building, pondering tonight's events. The woman Digg and Felicity had said operated out of the Glades had come to stop the Hoods. Based on the one man they'd caught tonight, it seemed the Hoods might be from the Glades themselves, which perhaps explained her interest. It also meant she needed to have a pretty good source of information about what was happening in the Glades.

He walked around the side of the building, trying to determine which way she might have entered or made her escape. But as he walked further down the alley, he realized he was being watched. Oliver straightened up and looked around.

"Who's there?"

A noise above had him squinting up into a fire escape. A figure in dark clothing hurried down the steps, jumping the last distance rather than using the ladder. She wore her hair long and blonde, almost platinum, and a nightstick hung from a belt at her side. Before Oliver could decide how to react, she rushed him.

"Hey!" He threw both hands up, figuring that was as believable a reaction for a billionaire, but all it seemingly did was leave him open for her hug. "Um."

"I knew you'd come back."

He knew that voice. And that smile, when she pulled back to give it to him. And that _kiss…_

Oliver pushed back on her shoulders, staring at her incredulously. "_Laurel?_"

"Not so loud," she cautioned him. "Oh." Laurel took off a black leather glove, licked at her thumb and leaned in to rub it over his mouth. "Didn't know that brand smudged that bad. Could just be the color."

"You- I— _what_ is going on?"

"Exactly what you wanted. Come on, we can talk back at my place." She grabbed his hand and pulled him along, and he was powerless to argue.

Mostly because he was trying to figure out just _how_ this could in any way be what he'd wanted.

Laurel couldn't believe he was back. She'd seen the car approach as she'd stayed hidden, listening to the police chatter and waiting for the right moment to slip away. Then Mr. Diggle has exited the limo and there he'd been.

Part of her was dying to ask where he'd gone all this time, what he'd done, if he'd worked through whatever he needed to and was here to stay for good. But she held all her questions as they snuck back to her downtown apartment and up the fire escape. Laurel went in through the window and waited for him to enter as well with ease before shutting and locking it again.

Laurel watched him look around at the mountain of blankets on her living room couch and several wadded up tissues on the coffee table.

"Neat, right? In case dad comes to check on my alibi with no warning," she explained. "Speaking of, let me change." She turned and went back to her bedroom, leaving the door open as she removed her wig and mask.

"Laurel, you- you're a vigilante."

"Yep." She took out a makeup wipe and applied it liberally to her face. She really was going to have to ditch the black lipstick, even if it did better separate her from her usual colors of choice.

"And you're okay with me knowing that because…?"

"Because you're the Hood. Or were the Hood. You don't have to lie again, I figured it out," she said, taking off her undershirt and kicking off her boots. She pulled a rolling suitcase out from under the bed and started stuffing everything inside.

"How?"

She hadn't anticipated him being so at a loss for words. Though when Laurel glanced back, she noticed Oliver's eyes on her leather-clad backside and chalked some of it up to distraction. Smirking, she pulled her pants down as well.

"Your letter, where you confessed you didn't think you were a hero." Laurel covered the distance between them and raised her hand to his cheek. "Which you're wrong about, but I understood you needing some time after everything that happened in the Glades. So I've been doing my best to fill in. Now that you're back, maybe we can really make a difference instead of just keeping the city afloat." She reached past him for her bathrobe hanging on the hook attached to her door, but he caught her arm.

"Laurel, when I wrote that, I wasn't asking you to become a vigilante."

"Then I'm not sure how you expected me to 'be the best of you'. I don't exactly have my own multibillion dollar company to run." He still wasn't smiling. Laurel sighed. "Ollie, what the Hood did last year for this city was more than anyone's tried to do for a long time. You're the reason anyone in the Glades even survived Merlyn's attack. I know you feel like you failed, but you didn't. Not anymore than the rest of this city failed its people."

"I failed if it means I left you to pick up the pieces." He shook his head. "You could be hurt or killed out there. If that had happened while I was gone—"

Laurel pulled out of his hold, folding her robe under one arm and walking back over to her bed. "What else was I supposed to do, Oliver? I wanted to do this _with_ you, but I wasn't going to stop and wait for you to come back. I'm not shutting myself off every time you decide to go anymore. This is my city, too." She unclipped her bra and shrugged out of it, hearing him walk up behind her.

"What if I help you do this a different way? With the company, with the law."

"The law's not going to stop the rest of those Hoods. They'll be desperate now that their one buddy's been caught and could flip on them. I really don't know what they'll try next, but when I heard the mayor was their next target—"

"Where did you hear that?"

"I've got informants. None of them know who I really am." If Roy Harper, for instance, realized the woman he was passing information to was his girlfriend's straight-laced mentor, well, he'd probably think he was crazy.

"Give me their names. I can talk to them, handle it—"

She yanked her night shirt over her head and whirled to face him. "That's not why I did this. I'm not a placeholder for you, Oliver. I'm in this with you, completely. Always have been, always will be."

His expression turned pained. "And if you die? Laurel, what about Tommy?"

She closed her eyes. "I regret what happened to Tommy every day. But I can't change the fact he went into that building any more than you could. And I can't change that, even if he loved me, he was right. We weren't going to last." She looked him square in the eye. "Either I could have tried to respect what he did for me by living my life as carefully and quietly as I could while I slowly died inside, or I could honor what he did for me by paying it forward. I'm able to be out there helping people _because_ of what he sacrificed for me. And the more people I save, the more that sacrifice means something. Isn't that why you do what you do?"

He stared at her, long and hard, without a word. Whatever battle he was waging to find the words, he eventually lost, because instead he grabbed her face and smashed their lips together.

It was a hungry kiss. They were both a little angry, a little desperate, a little bit needing the relief of each other's company. Her hands roamed up and down his back trying to anchor him, hold him down. His raked through her hair and ran up under her shirt, feeling her abs. Laurel gasped into his mouth when his hands roamed higher, and he stopped. They rested in place, foreheads bent together.

"Are we…?" Oliver looked so uncertain as he gazed into her eyes. Afraid and confused and so, so lost.

_Come home,_ Laurel thought wildly. _I left the light on for you._ Instead, she snuck her own hands under her clothes and laid them over his. Holding him to her however long he'd let her. "Yes. Always."

"And forever," he agreed, covering her lips with his own once more. Laurel reached for his shoulders and jumped, not even needing the slightest boost from him to get her legs around his waist this time. It was a far shorter walk to the bed, too.

Tomorrow, they could navigate how this whole thing worked. In their public lives, in their nighttime personas. Tonight was just for them.


End file.
